Brockton school cafeteria worker removed from position as she faces drug charges

Maria Papadopoulos

Monday

Mar 31, 2008 at 12:01 AMMar 31, 2008 at 5:31 PM

School cafeteria worker Debra Phillips of Brockton was arrested while at work at the Hancock Elementary School on Thursday and charged with selling drugs as part of a ring centered in the Easton Mobile Home Park on Route 138.

A woman who has worked for five years in Brockton school cafeterias has been charged in connection with a major drug ring operating out of an Easton mobile home park.

Debra Phillips, 48, of 12 Partridge Circle, Brockton, was arrested while at work at the Hancock Elementary School on Thursday and charged with selling drugs as part of a ring centered in the Easton Mobile Home Park on Route 138.

Phillips, who previously worked at Brockton High School, was charged with distribution of crack cocaine, distribution of the narcotics oxycodone and Percocet, and conspiracy.

Police said Phillips sold drugs once to an undercover police officer and once to a federal DEA agent.

No one answered the door at Phillips’ home on the city’s West Side on Sunday.

The arrest came the same week the A&E network broadcast a documentary largely based in Brockton that showed the region’s epidemic of OxyContin and heroin addiction. Oxycodone is the chief ingredient in OxyContin, a highly addictive narcotic that often leads to heroin use.

The A&E show used The Enterprise’s “Wasted Youth” series on the local addiction crisis as its framework.

Phillips has been removed from her position at the Hancock School, Joyce said.

“She will not be at the Hancock School come Monday morning pending the outcome of the investigation and we will be conducting our own investigation as well,” Joyce said.

Phillips, a married mother of two, has been a cafeteria worker for Brockton Public Schools for about five years, said Linda Machnig, president of the Brockton Cafeteria Workers Local 888.

Phillips spent three of those years working part time in the Yellow House cafeteria at Brockton High School, before getting a full-time job at the Hancock in Sept. 2007, Machnig said.

“I am totally shocked,” said Machnig, who has known Phillips for five years and has worked with her at the high school.

Machnig described Phillips, who cooked at the Hancock, as a family person and a good worker.

“She seemed to have her wits about her with everything,” Machnig said. “She talked about her children, just a typical mother like the rest of us.”

Phillips earned $13,573.33 as a cafeteria worker in fiscal 2006.

A substitute was placed in her position on Friday, Machnig said.

Police arrested Phillips while she was working at the school Thursday.

“I was told that the principal did a nice job of isolating the kids,” Ward 1 School Committee member Thomas J. Minichiello Jr. said. “The kids weren’t sort of witnessing this whole thing. It was done as discreetly as possible.”

School Superintendent Basan Nembirkow could not be reached for comment Sunday.

School Committee members said they were informed of Phillips’ arrest on Friday.

The arrest came after the region’s ongoing battle with opiate addiction was featured in the show “Intervention In-Depth: Heroin Hits Home” last Monday.

The documentary featured many of the local people, including several Brockton High School graduates, and issues profiled in The Enterprise’s yearlong package of stories on addiction.

The “Wasted Youth” stories, published between March and December of 2007, found that at least 144 people have died within 31/2-years from overdoses of opiates, such as heroin, as well as OxyContin.

Minichiello called for providing greater resources, including drug rehabilitation, to deal with the problem in Brockton.

“I think people have to realize that this is a larger problem than anyone realizes and that more resources need to be focused on it,” Minichiello said. “It affects all families and it affects, unfortunately, everybody.”

Maria Papadopoulos can be reached at mpapadopoulos@enterprisenews.com.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.